Bullseye

by Jessica Andersen

  A brisk knock at the door of the situation room interrupted his train of thought and had Cameron reaching for the lockdown button beneath the conference table.

  Suspicion prickled at Jacob and he held up a hand. “Wait.” He reached over and flicked on the surveillance cams monitoring the hall. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  Isabella stood outside the door, hands on her hips and a determined look on her bruised face as she stared up into the camera. A hidden microphone picked up her words. “Don’t even think you’re keeping me out of this, Jacob Powell.”

  His quick surprise was followed by a spike of temper. He yanked the door open, pulled her inside and banged the door shut. “How did you get out of—” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “You climbed out the window? You’re insane. You realize that, don’t you? You’re insane!”

  It wasn’t until he saw her flinch that he realized what he’d said and cursed himself inwardly. But just as the heat between them had always flared near uncontrollable bounds, he instantly aimed to wound when it came to her. He opened his mouth to apologize—again—but Cameron nudged him aside.

  “Cameron Murphy.” He stuck out a hand. “I’m the boss around here, and Boone Fowler, leader of the MMFAFA, is my bounty.” His tone brooked no argument. “Big Sky is collaborating with the authorities on tracking the fugitives and we’d appreciate any information you could give us.”

  Isabella shook hands with him, her expression tinged with wariness as she scanned the assembly. All ex-Special Forces, the bounty hunters were an intimidating lot.

  But she stuck out her chin as though leading for a punch, and said, “I help you, you help me. Quid pro quo.”

  “Meaning?” Cam asked mildly while Jacob shifted from foot to foot, suppressing the urge to toss her over his shoulder, carry her back to his office and lock the window, bar the door, and nail the whole thing tight.

  “Meaning I’ll give you what I have and what I know, but I want in on the search. I’m quick, smart, trained, and I have a hell of a motivation. Louis Cooper, his wife and baby girls are my responsibility. That doesn’t stop just because the kidnappers have convinced him to block my official abilities.”

  “Don’t do it,” Jacob said to his boss in a near growl, though he’d never dared tell Cam what to do before. “You know what Fowler and his men are like. What about your sister’s death? What about when Fowler almost killed your wife?”

  The other men shifted and glanced at each other, obviously expecting Cam to blast Jacob. But instead the Big Sky leader said mildly, “Agent Gray isn’t my sister. Like Mia, she’s trained, and unless I miss my guess, Isa bella has a weapon tucked at the small of her back. That goes a long way toward leveling sexual prejudices in my book. And—” his look was less forgiving than his tone “—if Mia ever heard you say that, she’d kick your ass. Don’t forget she was a bounty hunter when we hooked up.”

  “That’s neither here nor there.” Jacob’s fingers worried a plastic dart flight in his pocket. “I don’t want Isabella involved.”

  “I get that.” Cam turned to Isabella. “Without knowing what is—or was—between you and Powell, let me ask. Are you going to have a problem working with him?”

  Expression flat, she shook her head. “Not on your life. Whatever was between us died a long, long time ago. Now it’s just leftovers, and I can deal with leftovers.”

  Ouch. Jacob’s temper flared even before Cam cut a glance in his direction and asked, “How about you?”

  She’s nuts, he wanted to say. Leftovers my butt. But over the years he’d thought long and hard about what he’d done to her, what he’d said, and he’d realized that cruelty was cruelty, whatever the provocation. And he tried not to be a cruel man.

  So instead he fisted his hands in his pockets and felt the dart flight crumple into a ball. “No problem whatsoever, boss. It’ll be just like working with one of the guys.”

  “Fine then.” Cam extended his hand for a second shake. “Welcome to the team, Special Agent Gray. Now, let’s get to work.”

  But as the bounty hunters—plus one suspended Secret Service agent—sat around the conference table, Jacob knew it was anything but fine. He didn’t want Isabella near Boone Fowler and his followers.

  And he’d be damned if he was a leftover.

  Chapter Three

  An hour later Isabella, Jacob and two other bounty hunters headed to the Golf Resort for a recon. She let Jacob drive her rented Jeep, not because she’d felt particularly shaky, but because she’d lacked the energy to argue when he insisted.

  And because the situation was so damned weird.

  In the first few years after she and Jacob had gone their separate ways, one part of her had hated him like poison while another had dreamed of their reunion, how he would one day realize they’d had something special together, something he couldn’t find with anyone else.

  Unfortunately the reverse had been true. Over the months and years, Isabella’s hatred had dimmed and she’d come to realize that he’d been right about some of the things he’d said. They’d been too young, their relationship too intense to do anything but burn itself out. She’d forgiven him for that, but not for the way he’d ended it, the way he’d gotten drunk, picked a fight, picked up a girl, and the next day tried to blame it all on her.

  He’d faded from her conscious mind as she progressed from the Criminal Investigations Training Program in Georgia to the Secret Service Training Academy in Maryland. By the time she’d gotten herself established in her first field office, Jacob had become little more than a memory of the all-consuming, scary emotions that she tried like hell to avoid.

  And she had. For almost thirteen years she’d avoided emotional hot flashes and brain-scrambling entanglements. She’d built herself a solid, steady life. It wasn’t predictable—how could the Protections Division ever be that?—and it wasn’t always safe—but the danger she’d encountered had always came from without, never within.

  Until now.

  When she’d made the decision to drive to the Big Sky headquarters, she’d told herself she could handle seeing Jacob again. But she wasn’t sure she could handle the wild emotions that had bubbled to the surface the moment she’d seen him, the moment she’d touched him.

  She was supposed to have outgrown those feelings, damn it.

  “Your head bothering you?”

  She jolted at the sound of his voice, then consciously smoothed out her frown. “No. It’s fine.” She pointed at a passing sign. “Turn in here, the resort is a mile and a half up on the left. Use the second entrance. Secretary Cooper stayed in the Presidential Chalet.”

  Which was sadly ironic, given that men wearing ex-presidents’ faces had taken his family.

  “No problem.” He threaded the Jeep through the winding roads as though he knew exactly where he was going.

  Which he probably did, she realized with faint discomfort. He’d lived in the area for close to five years now, and undoubtedly knew these roads better than she did.

  But he hadn’t snapped when she’d bossed him with the directions. He would have before, she thought, then cursed under her breath. She needed to stop comparing the Jacob of today with the one she’d known in college.

  “Problem?” His single word settled between them, asking so many more things than it should have.

  She let out a frustrated breath. “Yeah. Problem. But it’s my problem, not yours.”

  He followed the signs toward the chalet where Secretary Cooper and his family had stayed. Isabella shivered when they passed between the monstrous stone pillars edged with copper filigree. At Jacob’s sharp look, she shrugged. “The last time I turned through here, Secretary Cooper was playing patty-cake with one of the girls in the back of the limo. Hope and I were chatting about the area. It was normal. Relaxed.” Or as relaxed as she allowed herself to be on the job.

  Jacob parked the Jeep in front of the chalet and waited while the SUV containing the other bounty hunters parked off to the side. Then he
turned, looked at her too closely and said, “It wasn’t your fault, Isabella.”

  Something shifted in her chest and her eyes burned. She wanted to lean into him, to crawl against him. Weakness. He was her weakness, the man who brought tricky emotions too near the surface and made her want to burrow in and cling.

  Hating the frailty, the temptation, she climbed out of the Jeep and slammed the door hard enough to attract the attention of the other bounty hunters. Rather than explain—especially since she couldn’t even explain it to herself—she said, “Right after he relieved me of my duties, Secretary Cooper made arrangements to return to Washington. The cleaning crew won’t be in until tomorrow, so everything should be undisturbed. But I didn’t find anything in the quick run-through I was able to make before Cooper kicked me out, and I’ll bet he picked the place up so there wouldn’t be any suspicion. He’s committed to doing everything the kidnappers have demanded, particularly keeping the authorities out of this.”

  It tugged at her that a man of Cooper’s stature and conviction could be so badly compromised by a threat to his family. A threat that never should have come to pass.

  “Let’s get on with it.” A dark-haired, heavily muscled hunter named Tony hefted a case that looked like a souped-up crime scene field kit. “We need to be in and out before dawn.”

  Isabella nodded shortly. “Come on.” She unlocked the front door with her key and pushed into the chalet before the hesitation could form. She didn’t want to look at the bullet-stung sofa and imagine Hope and the girls, didn’t want to look at the dining room table, hastily righted and reorganized, and remember seeing Louis Cooper bound to a chair, unmoving. But it was those images that, hopefully, would provide a clue.

  Mike and Tony moved into the chalet for a preliminary sweep. They didn’t touch anything right away, instead getting an overall feeling of the scene of the crime, which should have had technicians swarming over it with state-of-the-art equipment instead of one lame duck agent and three bounty hunters.

  Isabella felt an uncharacteristic, unwelcome press of tears at how quickly this had gone down, how completely her work—and Louis Cooper’s life—had been derailed. She swallowed hard and flinched when Jacob touched her arm.

  She glanced at him and saw that his eyes asked, Are you okay? But out loud, he said, “How did they get in? Break a window in the back?”

  “No.” The bitter failure of it burned her throat. “I looked. They didn’t break a damned thing. One minute everything was fine and the next they were inside my perimeter setting off a flash-bang in the living room. How?” She spread her hands to indicate confusion. Anger churned in her gut. “Damned if I know. I had the locks changed last week, and motions set around the far perimeter. They shouldn’t have been able to get through.”

  He stared past her as the two other bounty hunters moved from room to room, turning on the lights as they went. The illumination lent a strangely cheerful glow to the empty space. “Maybe they got the new keys from someone on the inside,” Jacob said.

  “Probably. Damn it.” Isabella forced herself to move into the dining room and look around, though she’d done so not seven hours earlier while Secretary Cooper had made his travel arrangements with shaking hands, then made a second call that effectively cut her off at the knees by subtly claiming she’d been acting irrational.

  Irrational, my ass.

  She felt the old, familiar anger and gritted her teeth. “Fine. Let’s do this.”

  They searched the chalet from top to bottom, but Cooper had been thorough. He’d removed the tape from the old-fashioned answering machine, wiped the flash-bang soot off the walls and even flipped the torn leather cushion, which set off soft warning bells in the back of her mind.

  It seemed like awfully clear thinking for a man whose family had been kidnapped.

  But what was the alternative? That the kidnappers had come back afterward to clean the chalet? Unlikely.

  So, senses heightened, she moved from room to room, searching again and watching the men of Big Sky perform a thorough forensic scan. Cameron Murphy’s bounty hunters had the reputation of being the best at what they did—and their skills were many and varied.

  Not that she’d checked them out, or anything.

  Then again, who was she kidding? She was preternaturally aware of Jacob’s every move, his quiet words to the others.

  And that just ticked her off more. No doubt he hadn’t spared her another thought after they split. He certainly hadn’t tried to get in touch over the years.

  Cursing inwardly, she redirected her thoughts, tossed the bedroom as thoroughly as she could, and sucked in a breath when she unearthed a squeaky duck from behind the bureau. It was purple, which meant it was Tiffany’s. The twins were nearly identical in looks and attitude, but Tiff loved purple and Becky preferred yellow.

  God, she thought, please let them be okay.

  She wanted to throw the cheerful little duck against the wall and howl at the injustice. She wanted to cuddle it close and pray for the babies and their mother.

  Instead she set the toy on the bed and kept searching.

  “I’VE GOT NOTHING.” Jacob glanced over his shoulder at Mike, who was meticulously dusting the door handle that lead out to the back porch. “You?”

  “Wiped clean.” The normally garrulous Clark straightened from his task with an it’s-late-and-I’m-tired groan. “This is a bust. Let’s get your woman and get out of here.”

  “She’s not my woman,” Jacob snapped with a quick, vicious bite of temper toward a man he considered a friend—if a slightly creepy one.

  “If you say so.” Mike shrugged, but his eyes were sharp on Jacob’s face. On his stance.

  “And don’t try to read me, either,” Jacob growled. “I’m not a suspect.”

  “I don’t try to read anyone, I read them. And do you want to know what I see right now? I see—”

  “No!” Jacob leaned down and got in the other man’s face. “I absolutely don’t want to know. I don’t believe in that hocus-pocus cr—”

  “Jacob?” Isabella said from behind him. “Am I interrupting?”

  He spun toward the arched doorway and the anger morphed again, this time into something hot and greedy. Something he hadn’t felt in a long, long time and didn’t welcome. “Yes, damn it, you’re—” Interrupting, he started to say but made himself bite the words off.

  It wasn’t her fault he couldn’t deal with seeing her again. But just as seeing her on the television screen had immediately jarred him out of whack, having her an arm’s length away was…too tempting.

  He was trying to handle it. Damn it, he was handling it. But he wasn’t handling the quick return of his oldest enemy—anger. He hated that she’d brought back that same sense of being trapped, of being out of control.

  God, he hated this. And it wasn’t even her fault. Hell, from the looks of her, cool as a Montana stream, she wasn’t feeling a tenth of what he was. Which made it his problem, not hers.

  So he took a breath and leveled his tone. “No, you’re not interrupting. We’re finished in here. We’ve got nothing. You?”

  She shook her head and her auburn hair followed the motion in a slide of color and softness. “I didn’t find anything, but Tony wants you two at the back door.”

  “Let’s go.” Glad to have something to do, Jacob gestured for her to go first, a bit of manners ingrained by his mother—or rather by the fleet of nannies, dance instructors and protocol experts she’d hired to shape her son into a civilized man like his father.

  It had all been another level of control, one he’d gloried at escaping in college and broken free of just after, though he’d left a part of himself behind.

  And wasn’t sure how to get it back. Wasn’t sure he wanted to.

  Yet at the same time, the mossy-eyed woman with the rich auburn hair pulled at him, made him want to be a different man than the one he’d made himself. Because he didn’t know how to deal with that, or with her, he ignored Isabella to
crouch beside Tony in the foyer just inside the back door. “What have you got?”

  The lean, black-haired bounty hunter used the blunt end of a scoopula—a tool that had a sharp blade on one end, a small rounded scoop on the other—to scrape a clump of dirt off the rattan mat. “Maybe nothing. But maybe something. I’m betting the latter.”

  “Tell me.” Jacob gestured for Mike to join him and stiffened when Isabella elbowed her way into the huddle.

  “Look at it very closely.” Tony held the small metal scoop up to the artificial light coming from an elegant chandelier above them. “What do you see?”

  Jacob squinted. “Dirt?”

  “Not just dirt.” Isabella pressed closer to the sample, nearly leaning across Jacob’s lap. “There’s something else in there. Something green?”

  Jacob gritted his teeth and tried like hell not to breathe, but her scent enveloped him, swamped him, surprised him. It was nothing like the flowers-and-sun-shine perfume he remembered from before. This was a woman’s scent, sharp and spicy and take-no-prisoners.

  Like Isabella herself.

  “Exactly,” Tony said. “That’s oxidized copper ore you’re seeing, which means…”

  Isabella leaned even closer, so her upper arm and the side of one breast pressed against Jacob’s shoulder. He ground his teeth and shifted away as she said, “Which means it could have come from one of the mining areas.” She sat back, frowning, and Jacob took a breath that was tainted with her essence, even though she wasn’t crowding his space anymore. “But how does that help us? There are hundreds of mines in this state.”

  “True.” Tony smiled, his too handsome face folding into creases and dimples that never failed to attract the ladies.

  Knowing it, and knowing Tony’s love-’em-and-leave-’em philosophy, Jacob angled his body between Isabella and the other bounty hunter and snarled, “So why are you grinning like this dirt is a clue?”

  “Because,” Tony answered easily, “I’ve got degrees in geology and topology. I know my dirt. Copper was only mined in one area of the state, about two hours north of here. There are maybe a half dozen shafts, all within short drives of each other.”